Landscape Painter in the Pacific Northwest working from direct experience, using drawings, photos and memories. Artist Statement; The environment I live in and the landscapes I travel to are the content of my work. This has always been so. I need personal contact with a place to have the sensory information to create a convincing work. My paintings always begin with an experience in a landscape. Whether it’s a walk in a local park or a destination hike, what happens while in that location is critical. It’s the experience that is my true subject. My earliest artistic influence came from the Zen Japanese aesthetic depicted in the encyclopedias in our home; then, later, from the insights of the American abstract expressionists, whose conviction that meaningful, honest painting was best achieved through improvisation inspired me. Though I am dedicated to interpreting the natural world, I do so as a secondary concern as I respond to the painting process taking place before me. Memory is a key element as I manipulate the paint. When something within the character of that landscape emerges, I recognize it and build from there. I believe that my frequent immersion into the environment informs my work in a deeply subconscious manner and is revealed in the act of painting. About the Artist; Randall David Tipton grew up in a transitional landscape of chaparral desert domesticated for agriculture, which then became suburbs. Inland Southern California was booming in the post-War years. Fontana, where Randall David Tipton was born, was home to the largest steel mill in the West. The hazardous air quality was a pivotal factor in his life’s trajectory. After a year of community college and a semester at Mendocino Art Center, Randall David Tipton deliberately rejected the academic path and chose to live communally on the Northern California coast. As the only male on Equitable Farm and just 19, his “real” education began immediately. After briefly returning to Southern California, Randall David Tipton moved to New Mexico, where his father was from. There, he began a serious painting practice, exhibiting in several Santa Fe galleries and supporting himself for the next 30 years through restaurant work. In 1985, he had the unique good fortune to study with Richard Diebenkorn at the then-new Santa Fe Institute of Fine Art. His month-long master class had lasting positive consequences. In 1993, he moved to Oregon. Randall David Tipton’s work in the 1990s veered away from landscape toward more allegorical interpretations of nature. In time, the rain forests and wetlands surrounding Portland impelled him to focus on realism again. He showed at the Alysia Duckler Gallery, as well as in small communities throughout the Northwest. In 2010, Randall David Tipton began to be awarded artist residencies at several institutions, allowing him to explore new landscapes on the Oregon coast, in the Trinity Alps, and in southeastern Wyoming. Most recently, he was Artist-in-Residence at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Otis, Oregon; and Brush Creek Ranch, Saratoga, Wyoming. Work by Randall David Tipton is found in a number of corporate and public art collections, including those of Oregon Health Science University, Southern Oregon University, Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, Newsweek, and Eastern New Mexico University. Randall David Tipton’s most recent exhibition, “Environments”, a joint show with Tom Cramer at Lake Oswego’s Museum 510, took place in March 2015. In 2016, he will have a solo show at Coos Art Museum on the south Oregon coast.